How to Get your Family to Eat 5-a-day

We all know that health experts recommend that we eat five portions of fruit and vegetables every day – at least. But while this statistic is often repeated, what is not heard so frequently is advice over how to get your family to eat five a day. The most straightforward thing to do is make it part of everyone’s daily routine so they do not even think about the fact they are consuming their five a day. However, if they do not eat much fruit and veg to start with then this may be easier said than done.

How Much Is A Portion?

It may be difficult, when starting, to know how much constitutes a portion. Obviously, one apple is a piece of fruit as is one strawberry, but it is also obvious that they are not equal in terms of portion size. Roughly, a portion is defined as a handful of anything. So, larger fruit such as apples and oranges count as one portion in themselves. Smaller fruit, berries, grapes, that sort of thing, you will need to measure a rough handful. This counts for vegetables such as sweetcorn and peas too.

Potatoes do not count as one of your five a day, but other starchy vegetables, such as parsnips, sweet potatoes and swede do. Fruit juice can also be used to bump up your family’s intake of fruit and veg but a 250ml glass is a portion – and then after that first glass does not count as more than one. Therefore, you cannot get a whole day’s intake from drinking masses of juice.

A Daily Routine

As mentioned above, making fruit and veg part of the daily routine is the key to ensuring your family has at least five portions a day. Make sure everyone starts the day off with a glass of juice and you have ticked off one portion before they even leave the house. To make this two portions before school or work, you could sprinkle dried fruit on their cereal, because dried fruit counts as well, and will make their boring breakfast cereal more tasty.

Unless your family all take packed lunches to work and school, it is harder to make sure they are eating fruit and veg during the day, but you can lead by example by always having fruit in the fruit bowl and picking up a couple of pieces to snack on during the day. But if you are responsible for cooking the evening meal, this is where you can make sure that your family get all their essential nutrients.

While it is easy for reluctant vegetable eaters to leave a side portion of cauliflower or broccoli, if the vegetables are in the actual meal, they will find it harder to do so. So, if you are cooking up a delicious curry, add a couple of red peppers and onions. Not only will these contribute to your family’s intake but they will bulk out the meal. Likewise, in a risotto, add peas or sweetcorn.

Lastly, if your family request snacks, steer them in the direction of the fruit bowl rather than the chocolate cupboard – a couple of bananas a day and they will soon be up to their five portions.

It is neither difficult nor tiresome to eat five portions a day. In fact, in many other countries, government guidelines suggest that people eat far more than five – seven, nine or even ten. But if your family members have not eaten a lot of fruit and veg in the past, getting them over this belief will be your biggest challenge. Once they start to see how easy it is, they will not complain. Moreover, once they try lots of different fruit and veg, they will see for themselves quite how tasty a diet rich in good things can be – and how good for them it is as well.